Contents

Achievements and Trophies

Singleplayer

Setting

Battlefield: Bad Company take place in the near future and focuses around the First Russo-American War between the United States and Russia mainly in the fictional country of Serdaristan, located in Eastern Europe along the border of Russia and access to the Caspian Sea. This is where Bad Company discovers their true ambition of collecting gold and selling it in an attempt to become wealthy.

Plot

The game starts as Marlowe is brought from a helicopter to the front lines. Preston meets his new squad-mates and quickly learns from Redford that Bad Company is much less formal than other military units. An artillery barrage wipes out the convoy, along with the squad's truck. This is where the player learns to look, jump, crouch, shoot, fire grenades, and repair vehicles. Mike-One-Juliet, the dispatch officer, sends Bravo-One Charlie (Preston's squad), to wipe out an artillery battery used by the Russians and later to use them to shell the incoming vehicles attacking Juneau convoy. The squad is then sent to clear a Russian-occupied river crossing when the Russians destroy the bridge. Bravo-One is then sent to clear a Russian-occupied farm before being extracted, but when their helicopter is shot down by anti-aircraft fire, they are then sent to destroy the anti-air emplacements and raid another Russian-occupied farm in Juneau Convoy's path. When the squad joins Juneau convoy, it is attacked by another artillery barrage. They barely manage to escape, and are sent to destroy radar jammers to let an airstrike destroy the artillery. After the airstrike finishes, Bravo-One clears out any survivors and encounter the Legionnaire Mercenaries, a mercenary group said to be the strongest military organization in the world. Haggard finds a gold bar in the suit of a dead Legionnaire mercenary, starting their interest in the Legionnaire's gold.

On what was supposed to be Redford's last mission before retirement, the squad is sent to move through more Russian territory when they find a house with the Legionnaires' insignia on a sign in front, Acta Non Verba - Latin for "Action, Not Words". Haggard sends Marlowe inside to check out the house. There, Marlowe finds the first case of gold. The squad had been given orders to destroy fuel and missile storage facilities and to then meet up with a US Armored Division and escort them into the Russian-held city of Zabograd. Bravo-One Charlie is sent ahead to clear the pass of anti-tank missile launchers and to escort the tanks to the other side of the town where the main assault is to take place. The squad is then sent to destroy a Russian radio outpost before they call for reinforcements, but they are too late as the call is made and more Russian forces arrive. Just then, a rocket is heard hitting a US tank nearby, to which Mike-One-Juliet sends the squad to defend it from the enemy reinforcements until more US forces arrive. Mike-One-Juliet then sends them to a harbor full of suspicious activity and says that if they do a good job, she could get them out the company and in to a better unit. They arrive at the harbor, but find that it is full of mercenaries. The squad, led by Haggard and the thought of gold, fight their way through, but after checking the bodies, find nothing. They then spot some trucks and watch them drive away. As they go, a bar of gold drops out of the back and they become determined to follow them and retrieve the gold.

Soon after arriving on the border of Serdaristan, Bravo-One Charlie finds the trucks crossing the border and realize they can't follow it any longer as Serdaristan is neutral in the war. Overcome with greed, Haggard runs across the border, "single-handedly invading a neutral country". When asked why they were in Serdaristan, Redford Tells Mike-One-Juliet that it was his idea to wipe out a potential threat. Redford's tour of duty is consequentially increased by another year. This pushes Redford over the edge and he tells the squad that they're going AWOL. They first destroy three radio transmission towers to cover their tracks. Redford then figures out that the gold is in another harbor. After they fight their way through, they are just about to enter the Legionnaire's cargo ship when the US Army shows up and captures them.

The army sends Bravo-One Charlie on a top-secret mission to go into Serdaristan and capture the President, who they believe is selling arms to the Russians. However, the squad realizes that Serdaristan is no longer neutral when they witness their chopper being shot down by Serdaristani anti-air emplacements. Mike-One-Juliet sends them to destroy the emplacements so that another chopper can be flown in to extract them with the President once they capture him. Later on, Miss July sees lots of activity at the Presidential Palace, so she sends Bravo-One a laser designator and directs them to an enemy weapons cache. They make their way through the President's personal golf course and head towards the Presidential Palace. Once they arrive, they find that the grounds are crawling with Legionnaires. They fight their way in to get the President but when Redford calls for an evac chopper, Mike-One-Juliet tells them that she cannot because the Army ditched them and that they were on their own. President Serdar then tells them he has a personal Mi-24 Hind that they could use to escape from Serdaristan.

The squad then takes the President's helicopter and use it to destroy Serdaristan's military infrastructure. Their helicopter soon runs out of fuel and they arrive at a refueling station. As there is no source of fuel near the helicopter, Marlowe and Haggard are forced to drive an M939 truck carrying fuel to the Hind. Haggard then accidentally pours the fuel into the cooling unit, making Sweetwater have to fix it due to Haggard's incompetence. They hold off Serdaristan Army reinforcements and as several BMD-3's starting moving towards them, Sweetwater fixes the fuel problem and they escape. The President than asks Bravo-One to bring him to Russia for his exile and as he informs them about where the gold is, but the Legionnaire appears in his personal Ka-52 and shoots down the pimped-out Hind.

Marlowe wakes up after the crash, only to find his squad-mates and the President missing. He tries contacting Mike-1-Juliet, to which she guides him to several areas where she thinks the squad is located. In one of the areas, there is a video screen of the Legionnaire interrogating President Serdar and later shooting the camera after he finds out that it was recording. Marlowe makes his way through a large Russian Army force to get to the monastery located on top of a mountain, where he finds his squad did not actually need much saving as they had just escaped captivity. Together, they all head back down the mountain, evading Russian reinforcements as they head towards the sea where they may find a boat to escape with. After fighting tanks, APCs and a Russian Hind, they find the President in a small port about to be executed by the Legionnaires. The squad manages to stop the execution and, with the President, take a boat to Sadiz, along the Caspian Sea.

The President gets his exile from his country on a small island near Sadiz while the squad goes after the gold. After fighting a large number of Middle Eastern Coalition soldiers and tanks, Bravo-One Charlie overhears that the US army is pushing onward toward the port of Sadiz, where the gold is located on the Legionnaire's tanker. The squad then destroys two bridges to prevent the Army from getting there first. When they reach the port, they find the stash of gold in a warehouse. While they were staring in awe at the piles of gold, the Legionnaire shows up and attacks the squad in his helicopter. They race towards the end of a pier where Sweetwater believes and anti-aircraft gun is located. However, just as Marlowe is about to man the VADS, the Legionnaire destroys it. Marlowe finds a M2 Carl Gustav helipad above and with a few well-placed shots, destroys the Ka-52. They return to the warehouse to find the US Army packing up all of the gold in the warehouse in to trucks. Just when the squad is about to leave in disappointment, a US Army Officer notices them and gives them orders to drive one of the trucks full of "scrap metal" with the convoy. They follow the convoy for a while until they turn off to a side road and speed away, each talking about how they will spend their share of gold. The last scene shows the Legionnaire getting out of his chopper's wreckage with a look of vengeance in his eyes.

Multiplayer

Destruction in Battlefield: Bad Company

Battlefield: Bad Company's multiplayer supports up to 24 players. The game still focuses on large scale vehicle warfare with a variety of maps, weapons, and vehicles. Thanks to the new Frostbite engine, Destruction plays an integral role into online combat as all maps are almost completely destructible and drastically change over the course of a match.

Ranks and Awards

The game features 25 ranks, each supplying players with unlock points for every other rank they achieve which can then be spent on weapons or gadgets in the main menu to unlock them. The game features three types of awards: Trophies, Patches, and Wildcards. Each is obtained through the completion of specific tasks and award additional experience points. While Patches and Wildcards may only be earned once, Trophies can be obtained an unlimited number of times.

Classes

Battlefield: Bad Company features five different classes, each having their own unique weapons, gadgets, and purposes.

Assault - Features Assault Rifles best suited for mid-range firefights, an under-mounted 40mm grenade launcher that is useful as a secondary weapon or against light vehicles and cover, and regular hand grenades to use against infantry. A player may also choose to spend one unlock point to unlock the Auto-Injector to heal themselves after a firefight.

Demolition - Features shotguns best suited for close-range, a faction-specific rocket launcher good versus vehicles that can also lock on to planted tracer darts, and hand grenades. A player may also choose to spend one unlock point to unlock anti tank mines to set in well traversed areas to prevent vehicles from advancing.

Recon - Features sniper rifles best suited for long-range targets, a faction-specific sidearm for use at close range, and motion sensors to spot and track targets in the area when thrown. A player may also choose to spent one unlock point to unlock the laser designator to allow the user to paint any neutral or enemy vehicle or emplacement to call in a laser guided bomb that may be guided towards the target.

Specialist - Features compact assault rifles with a silencer that is best suited for close-range to mid-range fights, a tracer dart gun that can be planted on vehicles to allow rocket launcher so lock on to, and regular hand grenades. A player may also choose to spend one unlock point to unlock C4 remote explosives that can be laid out as a trap or placed on vehicles or walls to blow them up.

Support - Features light machine guns best suited for mid-range fights, medkits to heal other players and the user themselves, a power drill to fix vehicles and to sabotage enemy vehicles as well as a melee weapon against other players. A player may also choose to unlock the mortar strike designator to call in mortar strikes to damage soft targets at the designated spot.

Maps and Gametypes

Many of the maps in Battlefield: Bad Company are large to accommodate the many vehicles used on them. With the added ability of destructible environments, every building, tree, wall, etc. can be destroyed as the engine allows 95% of the world to be destroyed. The other 5% that cannot be completely destroyed are internal walls of buildings, buildings themselves, and certain terrain types such as large concrete docks or water. Battlefield: Bad company features a total of twelve maps.

Vehicles

The game features an array of vehicles, ranging from land, sea, and air. However, fighter jets, which have appeared in Battlefield 2 have been excluded from Battlefield: Bad Company, due to the decrease in player size to 24 players and the resultant decreased map size from the many 64 player-sized maps featured in Battlefield 1942, Battlefield Vietnam, and Battlefield 2.

Factions

Beta and Demo

On June 5, the demo for Battlefield: Bad Company was released and featured the Oasis map, as well as a segment of the "Welcome to Bad Company" single-player mission. The online portion of the demo featured four unlockable ranks, with rank five being displayed for over a million points as a joke. Players who reached Rank 4 by the end of the demo were awarded with the UZI for use in the retail version of the game. Those who were fortunate to pre-order Battlefield: Bad Company were granted early access to the demo on May 29. Nearly all of the bugs in the beta version had been fixed by the time of the demo's release. DICE, however, did not predict the popularity of the demo, resulting in the ranking system to shut down which forced more servers to be set up to compensate for the amount of users.

Special Editions

Gold Edition

The golden cover of Battlefield: Bad Company Gold Edition

A limited edition of the game, known as the Gold Edition, a reference to the theme of the game, was released alongside the standard retail version. It cost slightly more than the retail version and features a gold printed cardboard piece to slip on top of the game case for the PlayStation 3 version, or a gold tin case for the Xbox 360 version, as well as a unique Battlefield: Bad Company poster for both versions. The game itself featured some integrated strategy videos for the original Gold Rush maps, as well as a "Behind the Scenes" video, and it automatically unlocked the weapons players would normally unlock once reaching Rank 25.

Downloadable Content

Find All Five

Find All Five was a promotional effort to allow players to unlock specific weapons for the game that were, at the time of the Final All Five event being released, unobtainable through playing the normal game. The weapon requirements are:

On September 11, 2008, codes for the QBU-88, M60, and UZI were released for free due to the lack of people having completed the necessary requirements[1] The code for the USAS-12 was later made free with the F2000 still reserved for Battlefield Veterans.

Conquest Gametype

The mode was not available at the game's release from the retail release version of the game. It was released as downloadable content on four maps for free on August 7, 2008. The second set of maps were released on October 30, 2008 after the results of a poll on the game's website asked which maps would like to be seen with the gamemode.

Reception

Reception

Review scores

1UP

7.5/10

Atrip

8/10

EuroG

8/10

G4

4/5

GamePro

4.5/5

GameRev

C

GSpot

8/10

GSpy

4.5/5

GT

8.4/10

IGN

8.6/10

OPM

4.5/5

OXM

8/10

OXMUK

7/10

PSM3

80/100

Aggregate scores

Game Rankings

83.76% (Xbox 360) 84.79% (PlayStation 3)

Metacritic

83/100 (Xbox 360) 84/100 (PlayStation 3)

Reviews for Battlefield: Bad Company were positive, with the deformable environments, large maps, high-quality audio, humorous characters in the single player mode, and diverse array of vehicles earning it praise from critics. Battlefield: Bad Company received an average of 83 on Metacritic[2] for the Xbox 360 version and an 84[3] on the PlayStation 3 version:

GameSpot gave the game an 8.5 out of 10,[4] saying that "Battlefield Bad Company is the most fun, addictive shooter released so far this year. While far from perfect, the intense sandbox warfare is something that you have to experience. Dice calls it tactical destruction. We call it explosive fun."

IGN gave the game an 8.6 out of 10,[5] saying that "There are plenty of flaws that FPS gurus will be able to nitpick about, but Bad Company delivers a fun-filled single-player campaign with a multiplayer component that can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the best in our industry."

Giant Bomb gave the game a perfect score of 5 out of 5 stars,[6] saying that "Between its easy-to-enjoy multiplayer and the romp that is the single-player campaign, Battlefield: Bad Company is an easy game to like. It looks great, has fun characters, a load of interesting weaponry, and works nicely whether you're playing alone or with a squad. The campaign lasts long enough to feel fulfilling, and the multiplayer kept me coming back once that was complete."

Trivia

During the gameplay it can be noted that the NPCs including the enemy soldiers and the ally US soldiers share the same facial structure and expression like the four characters in the game. One such example would be during the events of the first stage in which we could observe the US soldiers on the road.

It is the only game in the series to not initially feature Conquest mode in the multiplayer, because DICE wanted to promote their new Gold Rush game mode. Conquest was later added to the game in a free patch, along with new multiplayer maps based on singleplayer levels.

When one enters a vehicle, other players further away may appear to teleport to the vehicle like shadows.

The main menu background and music changes depending on what level of the singleplayer campaign the player is currently in. For example, if you left off in Air Force One, you would see the warehouses, enemy barracks and the fuel station with "Prelude to a Lost Cause (Orchestral Version)" playing unlike if you left off in Welcome to Bad Company, which shows the farms, farmland and artillery firing with "The Beast" playing.

Bad Company's storyline is based off the 1999 satirical war dramedy Three Kings.

In multiplayer, players can take screenshots by pressing the Select/Back button on their controller. Originally, players could then access them from the Battlefield: Bad Company website, but now the website has been replaced by one that only shows developer-made screenshots and videos for the game.